If you follow the news, you have undoubtedly heard about the trial that the U.S. president Donald Trump is currently facing. This trial is the result of an impeachment procedure, a process that has only previously happened twice in America. While many of you are aware that this trial might ultimately lead to Trump being removed from office if he is found guilty of the charges he is facing, you might wonder how the proceedings are actually conducted in order to remove a president from their function and how come none of the previous impeachments introduced were successful. Today's article will try to shed the light on those questions, in order to provide you with a clearer and more accurate picture of what is currently going on in the U.S.
According to Article II (4) of the U.S. Constitution, an impeachment procedure is the only way to remove the President (or other executive officers such as judges and cabinet members) from office in the course of their mandate. Such a process may only happen if the official is suspected of "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors." The first two offenses are pretty straightforward: treason refers to helping the enemies of the United States, while bribery is defined as taking money or gifts in exchange for a political favour. The difficulty lies in the "other high crimes and misdemeanors" part of the article. Indeed, those terms are not defined in the Constitution, but are left open to interpretation by Congress. In reality, it is specifically the vagueness of those words which posed a problem in the previous presidential impeachment proceedings of Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Richard Nixon. In each impeachment proceedings, the central legal question to be resolved was whether the actions of which the Presidents were accused of had to be considered as "other high crimes and misdemeanors" and thus, should be considered as legitimate grounds of justification for the procedure to be introduced. In short, Andrew Johnson was charged with 11 articles of impeachment in 1868 but was acquitted the same year as the conviction failed by (only!) one vote. In 1998, Bill Clinton was charged with two articles of impeachment (remember the sexual harassment' scandal he was associated with? Well yes, this was brought to Court!) but was acquitted in 1999 as even a simple majority of the votes was not obtained for any of the charges. The Nixon case is also of interest here, as an impeachment procedure was introduced against him in 1973, but the impeachment in this case was so likely to succeed that he himself resigned from office in 1974.
Well, this little historical overview already shows that it is not an easy task to dismiss a president… But why is that so hard? The answer can be summarized as follow: an impeachment procedure is not a criminal process, but a truly political one.
As a reminder, the United States of America is a federal system, comprising a central authority and fifty constituent States. All the States have their own Constitution, meaning that they all have their own State parliament and Court system, while the federal character of the U.S. is reflected in the three branches (the legislature, the executive and the judiciary) of the central government. With regard to the federal legislature, it operates through a bicameral parliament, referred to as "the Congress." Congress' lower chamber is the House of Representatives and they represent the people of the U.S. The upper chamber, the Senate, represents the constituent States of the U.S. and each State (irrespective of size) is represented by two senators in Congress. The Senate has significant prerogatives in the federal system of the U.S: for example, it must *always* give its consent to pass federal legislation and it cannot be overruled by the House of Representatives.
Coming back to the impeachment process, the procedure all begins in the House of Representatives (Art. I (2) U.S. Constitution). It is therefore solely within the hands of the lower chamber of the American Congress that lies the power to initiate such a procedure. Any member of the HoR may suggest the launching of the impeachment process and it is then up to the speaker of the HoR (the leader to the majority party) to decide whether to proceed with an impeachment inquiry conducted by a House committee. If it does, the House Judiciary Committee has to determine the existence of grounds for impeachment. If it does find such grounds, the list of charges drafted against the President will be set as "articles of impeachment." Those articles must then be voted on individually by the full HoR in order to pass to the next stage. As only a simple majority of the votes (more than half of the total) is needed in order for an article of impeachment to be presented to the Senate, the first stage does not usually cause any trouble in the impeachment process.
The second stage is therefore only concerned with those articles that have been approved by the lower chamber of Congress. It is at this point that the Senate has to try the impeachment in a similar fashion as a court trial, but with the proceedings presided by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and with the Senate members acting as a jury (Art. I (3) U.S. Constitution). Apart from that, the President has the same defence rights as any other alleged offenders. In any impeachment cases, a guilty verdict requires a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
With this brief explanation in mind, let us take you back to Trump's case. Trump's articles of impeachments (those that have been approved by a simple majority vote in the House of Representatives) are respectively abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The first one is related to Trump being accused of seeking help from Ukraine's government in order to get himself re-elected (for more information about this drama, here is a summary of the story. The second article (obstruction of Congress) relates to the White House refusal to allow staff to testify at the first impeachment hearings last year. It is significant to highlight that those charges were approved by the House of Representatives, which is led by the democratic party or, in other words, Trump's opponents. It is therefore not surprising that the lower chamber of the Congress, from a political point of view, ought to remove Trump from his presidential function. However, while the democratic leaders of the HoR voted on the two articles in December 2019, the case was then brought to the Senate for trial. But guess who holds the Senate majority of seats? The Republican party, which is Trump's party! Indeed, Republicans have a majority of 53 out of 100 seats in the upper chamber. As a two-third majority of votes, which in the Senate means 67 votes out of 100, is needed to found Trump guilty and to ultimately remove him from office, it appears doubtful that such a number will be attained. As seen before in history and repeating right now, impeachment processes are much more political than they are legal and the 53 Republican senators are expected to support their President and vote against the conviction. As 67 votes are required, that means that 34 out of 54 Republicans' votes are needed in addition to the 43 Democrats' voices in order to convict Trump. Do you think it is credible that suddenly the Republicans will turn their backs on their leader? In our opinion, following the scheme of his predecessors Johnson and Clinton, Trump will be acquitted, and that is how the fourth presidential impeachment process in the U.S. will end up repeating history.
Feel free to comment and share your thoughts about this topic in the comment section, and keep an eye on the news as the trial may likely end in the following days!
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